Two young brothers found wandering alone in woodland in Portugal after reportedly being abandoned by their mother and stepfather have led to the arrest of the couple on suspicion of child abuse and domestic violence.
Portuguese police said the boys, aged five and three, were discovered crying and calling for their father along a remote country track between the seaside towns of Alcácer do Sal and Comporta.
According to authorities, the children told officers that their mother, 41-year-old Marine Rousseau, and stepfather, 55-year-old Marc Ballabriga, had driven them into a wooded area and told them they were going to play a game to “drive away the devil.”
The boys said the couple blindfolded them and instructed them not to remove the blindfolds until they had found a knife supposedly buried in the ground. Police said the older child tried digging through the dirt before eventually removing both blindfolds and realising they had been left behind in the forest.
Authorities arrested the pair on Wednesday, May 20, after locating their vehicle, which had French licence plates, parked near a café. According to CNN Portugal, the couple had reportedly spent “several hours” inside the café before police arrived.
Officials said Rousseau and Ballabriga remained silent when approached by officers. The children were eventually discovered shortly before sunset on Tuesday by local baker Artur Quintas and his wife while driving along the isolated path.
Quintas told Portuguese newspaper Correio da Manhã: “They were crying, they were terrified. They were crying and calling for their father. “The oldest one told me that he and his brother had gotten lost in the forest and that their father and mother had left without taking them.”
He added: “I saw that they were each carrying a backpack. I immediately realised they had been abandoned.” Police said the boys’ hands were covered in dirt and one of them had suffered a knee injury. Their backpacks reportedly contained only a change of clothes, an apple, an orange and two bottles of water. Authorities believe the children had been living in Colmar, eastern France, before their mother allegedly disappeared with them around two weeks ago and travelled to Portugal.
It later emerged that the boys’ biological father, who is separated from Rousseau, had already filed a child abduction report with French police. Colmar prosecutor Jean Richert told Le Parisien: “He’s like everyone else, he doesn’t understand.”